it proper to tell everybody
all that he knew. It was admitted that a great injury had been done
to the poor Marquis, but it was argued on the other side that the
injury had been quickly removed.

There had, however, been three or four hours at Trafford Park, during
which feelings had been excited which afterwards gave rise to bitter
disappointment. The message had come to Mr. Greenwood, of whose
estrangement from the family the London solicitor had not been as
yet made aware. He had been forced to send the tidings into the sick
man's room by Harris, the butler, but he had himself carried it
up to the Marchioness. "I am obliged to come," he said, as though
apologizing when she looked at him with angry eyes because of his
intrusion. "There has been an accident." He was standing, as he
always stood, with his hands hanging down by his side. But there was
a painful look in his eyes more than she had usually read there.

"What accident--what accident, Mr. Greenwood? Why do you not tell
me?" Her heart ran away at once to the little beds in which her
darlings were already lying in the next room.

"It is a telegram from London."

From London--a telegram! Then her boys were safe. "Why do you not
tell me instead of standing there?"

"Lord Hampstead--"

"Lord Hampstead! What has he done? Is he married?"

"He will never be married." Then she shook in every limb, and
clenched her hands, and stood with open mouth, not daring to question
him. "He has had a fall, Lady Kingsbury."

"A fall!"

"The horse has crushed him."

"Crushed him!"

"I used to say it would be so, you know. And now it has come to
pass."

"Is he--?"

"Dead? Yes, Lady Kingsbury, he is--dead." Then he gave her the
telegram to read. She struggled to read it, but the words were too
vague; or her eyes too dim. "Harris has gone in with the tidings. I
had better read the telegram, I suppose, but I thought you'd like to
see it. I told you how it would be, Lady Kingsbury; and now it has
come to pass." He stood standing a minute or two longer, but as she
sat hiding her face, and unable to speak, he left the room without
absolutely asking her to thank him for his news.

As soon as he was gone she crept slowly into the room in which her
three boys were sleeping. A door from her own chamber opened into
it, and then another into that in which one of the nurses slept. She
leaned over them and kissed them all; but she knelt at that on which
Lord Frederic lay, and